Nourmahal: An Oriental Romance (Complete)
9781465557209
418 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
In no part of our oriental world are there to be found bolder or more picturesque mountain ranges, or a greater variety of climate, fruits, flowers, and animals, than in that tract of country which lies beyond the grand chain of the Himalas. Although the snow and the cloud seldom disappear, which prevent their stupendous peaks from being seen in all their naked majesty, nevertheless the wanderer looks with delight upon their numerous declivities and valleys, clothed in green herbage, interspersed with villages, and animated by herds and flocks, which abundantly reward the cares of their pastoral population. Sometimes standing upon an abrupt ridge, after having ascended through a wild accumulation of rocks, he beholds, spreading at his feet, a dell irrigated by streams that fall from the surrounding heights with a pleasing murmur, and occupied by cottages near which the amaranth, the convolvulus, the primrose and the hyacinth, blend their charms in gay luxuriance. Passing through the hospitable valley, he clambers higher up the mountain, and treads through copses, the haunt of the wild goat, red and white deer, and a peculiar species of fox remarkable for it fleetness. The copse leads to the forest, tenanted by that elegant bird the bee-eater, whose brown back and yellow neck form so striking a contrast with the bright emerald of his breast and wings; by the flamingo, that sometimes lightens in the firmament like a meteor; the ring-dove, the starling, the nightingale, and above all the ouzell, whose body has stolen the blush of the rose, while its proud head seems to have been just dipped in the azure of the skies. More than a thousand years have passed since the volcano and the earthquake filled that region with terror; but the traces of their fearful visitation appear to be of yesterday. Enormous bulks of rocks, rent asunder, present abysses through which the torrent rolls unseen, but not unheard, as innumerable caverns multiply its voice of thunder, while it contends against the fallen masses that momentarily resist its course. And yet it is delicious to contemplate the borders of those unfathomable channels, overhung by thickets of barberries and jasmines, and myriads of flowering shrubs, which send forth a spicy fragrance, and decorate the gloomy horror beneath with festoons of the most exquisite beauty. On the edge of one of those dangerous ravines, in the district of Arjun, Kazim Ayas found himself expecting the return of his falcon, that had plunged into it after a quail. He had brought out the bird rather as a companion than for the purpose of sport, to which he was not much addicted. He had but recently returned to his native village among the mountains of Arjun, from the city of Samarcand, where he had obtained his education, at the celebrated college founded by the munificence of Ulug Beg. The poems of Nizami were much more delightful to his ear than the sound of the hunter’s horn, especially those which paint in such fascinating colours the loves of Leili and Mejnun. For him, also, the moral compositions of Jami possessed peculiar charms. The elegance of language and versification, the sublimity of thought, the strain of religious and philosophical mysticism which characterise the effusions of that bard, often held the soul of Kazim bound in the spell of enchantment. Nor did he fail to render himself familiar with almost every branch of science, and with the historians who have related the fortunes of all the great empires.
